Exam Stress and Summer Plans
Woe is me. It seems that in America there exists this terrible three letter word called TAX. It is a confusing and befuddling thing, and I have been poring over the forms for days now, and I still cannot understand what I am meant to write on my form.
You see, in my country, we don't pay tax. Well companies pay some sort of corporate tax, but we as individuals do not. And I have no idea where to begin, or how much the tax actually is anyway. I guess as an international student, I won't have to pay tax anyway, but I still have to file, and there lies the problem. Forms are so confusing, and I'd much rather go to sleep than fill out my tax form, but the deadline is approaching, so I shall suck it up and get to it.
DIGRESSION: Here is a picture of Maitama, where I live in Abuja (in Nigeria). *sigh* I miss home terribly
I have a piece in the Saint Leo art show that's coming up on Thursday. It's only a portrait drawing, and I don't think I am going to win or anything, but it's all terribly exciting. The other entries are really beautiful, but there was this particular entry that irked me.
It was, no doubt, a wonderful piece. It was a painting of the map of the world, and some Hausa-Sudanese women in their djallabiahs, hijabs, and burqas, all very colourful. The title of the painting was The Children of Darfur. However, what bothered me about the painting was that all the countries of the world were painted black, and then the WHOLE OF AFRICA was painted red.
- But the title is: The Children of DARFUR - not Africa. Why paint Africa red?
I think I would have been much less annoyed had she painted only SUDAN red, since that is
where Darfur is. 
I don't think that if there was a humanitarian crisis in France one would paint all of Europe red, now do you? Seriously, Africa is not a country, it's a continent with 52 countries,
and every country is as profoundly different from the other as can possibly be. I'm Nigerian, and there are a million Nigerians that I don't understand when they speak because I only speak two out of the 250 + languages we speak in Nigeria. Just TWO. Painting the whole of Africa red might make an observer imagine that Darfur is all of Africa, or that Darfur is another name for Africa pretty much like when we call the USA America. I had to drink a glass of cold water to get rid of my annoyance. I can't do anything about it. I can't make her un-paint it anyway. It's still a beautiful painting.
Alright, I'm in the middle of a rant, and I might as well continue ranting. I hate the way Africa is depicted in the media. Everyone thinks we're starving, and we're not. Half the time I secretly wonder whether they store these hungry looking children that they show on TV in a warehouse somewhere and pull them out only when it's time to make a documentary.
I am not saying that there are not poor people in Africa, but what I am trying to get across is
that the MAJORITY of us make a decent living, and live decent, fun, interesting lives. There are 
those who are very rich, and there are those who are very poor, and there's everyone else in between. My country Nigeria for example, is not a poor country by ANY means. At all. Yes, there are poor people in the country, but outsiders do not know the history and the reasons behind a lot of what poverty that exists.
Number one, MAJORITY of Nigerians are educated. We put an extremely high premium on Education, and for a Nigerian child, dropping out, or doing badly in school is just not an option. It isn't done. That's probably the reason why most of us are overachievers. When we go to school, it's not just for ourselves; there are our parents to make proud, our other relatives, our parents' friends, the neighbours, even the mallam ( Hausa man) that lives on the other side of town will ask you about your progress in school.
Number two, we have a GREAT time in Nigeria. Every Nigerian student in America anxiously counts down the days until they can get back home. There's so much to do. There are clubs to go to, movies to see, beaches to hang out on, speed boats to take out, island houses to have parties in, plays at the theatre and TerraKulture, the Durbah in Kano, fashion shows, art shows, poetry jams, the British Council puts on this great youth event called Words and Pictures (WAPI). We get to meet celebrities, read our poetry and basically any other art thing we have going on. There are always the soccer matches which are a national past time, and then there's the food! Nothing compares to it. The atmosphere in Nigeria is simply magical. No wonder we were voted the happiest place on earth.
And I am sure that this is how it is in most other African countries, perhaps not so as much as in Nigeria, but in most, except Zimbabwe, which has economic issues, and other countries that are war torn. I wish the media would show the beautiful/happy side of African countries. Every time I watch TV here, I almost can't believe that I live in the country that their talking about. I keep wondering "where do they find these people/places?" AND they NEVER say anything about the effort that local organisations are making to assist the less privileged people in the society. It always has to be some international organisation that swoops down and saves the day when I know for a fact all the good that local organisations do and how much progress they make. For example, KIND (a Nigerian organisation) in association with other local charitable organisations produced the Vagina Monologues (Performance Poster pictured LEFT) in Lagos and Abuja and performed a special version of the hit play which had been rewritten to speak specifically to the Nigerian woman (with permission from the author of course) in celebration of all Nigerian women and to raise awareness for Women's empowerment and the education of the Girl Child.
So, in order to balance the picture that the media today has portrayed about my home, here are some pictures, firstly of my country Nigeria, and a link to the Facebook Group called The Africa They Never Show You. It is a group created and contributed to by African Students all over the world, determined to show the world what their home really looks like. The picture painted of us in the media is terribly embarrassing to say the least. There are poor people in America and Europe but we don't flash them on TV ceaselessly. Let's talk about all the good stuff African countries have to offer. Let's face it, there are scenes of breathtaking beauty that you will never witness anywhere else in the world, my country's economy is growing in leaps and bounds, and there has never been a better time to invest. And no, I do not have a tiger in my backyard. It is just as likely to bite me as you.